Monthly inflation rates in developed and emerging countries 2021-2026

Monthly inflation in developed and emerging countries, 2021 to 2026

Inflation in developed economies rose from about 1 percent in early 2021 to a peak near 7.7 percent in late 2022, then eased back toward 2.7 percent by mid 2026. Emerging economies ran higher throughout, peaking close to 10 percent.

This overview tracks monthly consumer price inflation, measured against the same month a year earlier, for developed and emerging economies from January 2021 to July 2026. It shows the surge, the peak and the long decline that followed. For the country detail, our ranking of the 25 countries with the highest inflation rate sets out where prices rose fastest.

The two groups moved together in direction but not in level. Developed economies saw inflation climb and fall more sharply around the 2022 peak, while emerging economies stayed elevated for longer, keeping a persistent gap between the two.

Few economic stories of the decade have mattered more. The rise in prices after the pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine reshaped interest rates, wages and living standards across rich and developing economies alike, as our inflation worldwide and global inflation coverage tracks.

The monthly view captures turning points that annual averages miss. It shows exactly when inflation peaked in each group, how quickly it fell, and how far apart developed and emerging economies remained through the recovery, a picture our global economy hub sets in context.

Year over year, monthly: developed inflation peaked near 7.7 percent in late 2022, while emerging inflation peaked close to 10 percent and stayed higher for longer.

The chart makes the shared shock clear. Both groups saw inflation surge from 2021, peak in 2022 and fall through 2023 and 2024, but emerging economies settled at a higher level, near 6 percent, against about 2.7 percent for developed economies.

A note on the data. The two lines follow the IMF annual averages for advanced and emerging economies, with the monthly path pinned to real OECD monthly readings, such as the OECD area peak of 10.3 percent in June 2022 and its fall to 3.3 percent by January 2026. Months between those published points are interpolated.

The distinction between developed and emerging economies is central to the story. Developed economies are the wealthy, industrialised nations, while emerging economies are the fast growing but lower income countries that make up a large and rising share of world output.

Because emerging economies now account for the majority of global growth, their inflation matters far beyond their borders. Higher prices there feed into global supply chains, commodity markets and the cost of goods that developed economies import every day.

Reading inflation month by month also reveals how expectations shifted. In 2021 many policymakers described the surge as temporary, only for it to prove far more stubborn, a misjudgement that shaped the aggressive response that followed in 2022 and 2023.

Measuring inflation year over year, as this series does, has one important effect on how the chart reads. A high figure reflects the change over the previous twelve months, so sharp monthly jumps in prices can keep the annual rate elevated long after the initial shock has passed.

The choice of a monthly frequency is deliberate. Quarterly or annual data would blur the exact timing of the peak and the pace of the decline, both of which are central to understanding how developed and emerging economies responded to the same global forces.

Developed and Emerging Inflation by Year

The table shows the annual average inflation rate for each group from 2021 to 2026 and the gap between them. It highlights the 2022 peak, when both groups reached their highest rates, and the wide gap that opened in 2024.

The gap widened sharply in 2024, when developed inflation had returned close to target but emerging inflation stayed above 8 percent, before narrowing again as emerging economies cooled, as our GDP per capita coverage frames through income differences.

Annual averages are the figures most often quoted in headlines, but they can lag the turning points by months. A year that averages 7 percent may have started far higher and ended far lower, which is why the monthly series adds so much detail.

The 2024 row is the most striking. It shows developed inflation almost back to target while emerging inflation barely moved, the clearest sign that the two groups were on very different tracks even three years after the initial shock.

It is worth remembering that these group averages are weighted by the size of each economy. Larger economies count for more, so the developed figure leans heavily on the United States, the euro area and Japan, while the emerging figure reflects giants such as China and India.

The narrowing of the gap in 2025 and 2026 is the more hopeful signal in the table. It suggests the divergence of the middle years was a phase of the recovery rather than a permanent split, even if the two groups had not fully converged by the end of the period.

How High Did Inflation Peak?

Developed economy inflation peaked near 7.7 percent in late 2022, the highest in four decades, while emerging economy inflation peaked close to 10 percent. Global inflation as a whole peaked near 8.7 percent in the same period.

The peak marked the sharpest burst of inflation in a generation. It was driven by pandemic supply shocks, a rapid rebound in demand and the surge in energy and food prices that followed the invasion of Ukraine in early 2022.

For developed economies, a rate near 7.7 percent was a profound shock after years of inflation close to 2 percent. It forced the fastest round of interest rate rises in decades as central banks scrambled to bring prices under control.

Emerging economies were already used to higher and more volatile inflation, but a peak near 10 percent still strained budgets and currencies, hitting households that spend a large share of income on food and energy hardest.

The high point: emerging economies peaked close to 10 percent in 2022, developed economies near 7.7 percent, with the global figure around 8.7 percent.

The peaks came at slightly different times, with many developed economies topping out in late 2022 and some emerging economies a little earlier, but the message was the same across the world, that inflation had reached levels not seen in a generation.

Comparing the peaks also shows how much starting conditions mattered. Developed economies entered the crisis with inflation near 2 percent, so the climb to nearly 8 percent was enormous, while emerging economies started higher and had less far to travel to double digits.

The speed of the ascent was as alarming as the level. In many developed economies, inflation went from around 2 percent to above 7 percent in little more than a year, one of the fastest accelerations recorded in the postwar era.

For central banks, the peak was the moment credibility was most at risk. Allowing inflation to stay near its high for too long threatened to unanchor the expectations that keep long run inflation stable, which is why the policy response was so forceful.

The peak also reset how the public thinks about inflation. After decades in which price rises barely registered as a concern in most developed economies, the surge of 2022 pushed the cost of living to the top of political and household worries almost everywhere.

Not every economy peaked at the same headline number. The figures shown here are group aggregates, and behind them lie wide ranges, from economies that barely crossed 5 percent to those where inflation ran well into the double digits at the height of the crisis.

How Wide Is the Gap Between Developed and Emerging?

The gap between emerging and developed inflation swung over the period. It was about 2 to 3 percentage points in 2021 and 2022, narrowed as both peaked together, then widened to more than 5 points in 2024 before closing again toward 3 points.

The gap is revealing because it shows how differently the two groups recovered. Developed economies brought inflation back toward target quickly, while emerging economies stayed elevated, so the gap between them grew even as the shock faded.

At its widest in 2024, the gap reflected developed inflation near 2.6 percent against emerging inflation above 8 percent. That divide meant very different pressures on interest rates, currencies and household budgets across the two groups.

The gap narrowed again through 2025 and 2026 as emerging inflation eased toward 6 percent, though it remained wider than before the pandemic, a sign that the two groups had not fully reconverged.

A shifting divide: the gap between emerging and developed inflation widened to more than 5 percentage points in 2024 before narrowing again toward 3 points.

The path of the gap is a reminder that a single global inflation figure hides very different experiences. Even as the world average fell, the distance between developed and emerging economies grew for a time before starting to close.

The widening gap in 2024 had real consequences for capital flows. As developed economies cut rates while emerging inflation stayed high, investors weighed currency risk carefully, and several emerging central banks kept policy tight to defend their exchange rates.

A persistent gap also reshapes trade and competitiveness. When one group of economies runs inflation several points above another for years, relative prices and wages drift apart, gradually altering which countries look cheap or expensive to trade with.

The gap is measured in percentage points rather than as a ratio, which keeps it easy to read against the two underlying lines. A gap of five points means emerging inflation was running five whole percentage points above the developed rate at that moment.

Tracking the gap over time is a useful discipline because it separates the common global shock from the local factors specific to each group. The shared surge lifted both lines together, while the diverging recovery is what opened and then slowly closed the gap.

How Do the Annual Averages Compare?

On an annual average basis, developed economies ran at about 3.1 percent in 2021, 7.3 percent in 2022, 4.6 percent in 2023 and 2.6 percent in 2024. Emerging economies ran higher every year, from 5.9 percent in 2021 to 9.8 percent in 2022.

Comparing the yearly averages smooths out the monthly noise and shows the underlying story. Both groups surged in 2022, but emerging economies stayed far above developed ones through 2023 and 2024, keeping global inflation elevated.

By 2025, developed inflation had settled near 2.5 percent, close to the target most central banks aim for, while emerging inflation had fallen to about 5.5 percent, still more than double the developed rate.

The yearly view also frames how the largest economies shaped the totals, since a few big developed and emerging economies carry heavy weight in each aggregate, as our largest economies coverage sets out.

Developed vs emerging: both groups peaked in 2022, but emerging economies stayed far higher through 2023 and 2024 before easing.

The grouped bars show the persistence of emerging economy inflation. While developed economies returned close to target within two years of the peak, emerging economies took longer, keeping the world average above pre-pandemic norms.

The yearly figures also underline how uneven the recovery was within each group. A handful of large economies with well anchored expectations pulled the developed average down quickly, while crisis hit emerging economies kept the emerging average stubbornly high.

Looking across the six years, the single clearest message is persistence. Developed inflation spiked and faded within about three years, but emerging inflation stayed elevated for longer, a pattern with deep roots in currency strength and policy credibility.

The gap column in the table is a compact summary of divergence. It was modest in the surge years, widened sharply as developed economies recovered first, then began to close only as emerging economies finally cooled in 2025 and 2026.

Annual averages remain the standard reference for economists comparing years, contracts and forecasts. They iron out seasonal noise and one off spikes, giving a cleaner sense of the underlying trend than any single month can provide on its own.

The contrast between 2022 and 2024 captures the whole episode in two rows. In 2022 both groups sat near their peaks, while by 2024 developed economies had returned close to target and only emerging economies kept the world average meaningfully elevated.

What Drove the 2022 Surge?

The 2022 surge was driven by several forces at once. Snarled supply chains, a jump in energy prices, rising food costs, a rapid rebound in demand and broad underlying pressure on core prices all added to the peak near 7.7 percent in developed economies.

No single factor explains the surge. It was the combination of a pandemic recovery, supply disruptions and the energy shock after the invasion of Ukraine that pushed inflation to levels not seen since the early 1980s.

Energy was the most visible driver. The jump in oil and gas prices fed straight into fuel, heating and electricity bills, and then into the cost of almost every other good and service, as our gas prices coverage tracks.

Food prices added another layer, hit by higher energy and fertiliser costs and by disruption to grain exports. For many households, especially in emerging economies, food is the largest single item in the budget.

Building to the peak: supply chains, energy, food, demand and core pressure together lifted developed inflation to about 7.7 percent in 2022, on an illustrative breakdown.

Separating the temporary drivers, such as energy and supply chains, from the more lasting pressure on core prices was the central challenge for policymakers, since it shaped how far and how fast interest rates needed to rise.

The order in which the drivers arrived mattered as much as their size. Supply chain strains and rebounding demand came first, then the energy and food shock of 2022 landed on top, turning a strong recovery into a full inflation crisis.

Core inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy, is the measure central banks watch most closely. Its steady rise showed that price pressure had spread well beyond the initial shocks and into wages, services and rents across the economy.

Emerging economies faced an extra driver that developed ones largely escaped, namely currency weakness. As the dollar strengthened during the tightening cycle, many emerging currencies fell, raising the local price of imported energy, food and other essentials.

It is important to stress that the breakdown shown here is illustrative rather than an official decomposition. It is intended to convey how several forces stacked together to produce an extraordinary peak, not to assign precise blame to any single cause.

Base effects also shaped the numbers in ways that can mislead. Because inflation is measured against the previous year, the very high readings of 2022 made the following year look calmer by comparison, even where prices were still rising at a brisk pace.

How Did Central Banks Respond?

Central banks responded to the surge with the sharpest round of interest rate rises in decades. In developed economies, policy rates climbed from near zero in 2021 to above 5 percent by 2023, before easing as inflation fell.

The scale of the tightening matched the scale of the shock. After years of near zero rates, central banks moved quickly to cool demand and to keep inflation expectations from becoming unanchored, as our interest rates and central banks coverage follows.

The relationship between inflation and rates is at the heart of monetary policy. As inflation rose in 2022, rates followed, and as inflation eased through 2024, central banks began the slow process of cutting them again.

The United States Federal Reserve led the way, raising its policy rate above 5 percent before cutting toward 4 percent by 2026, a path our federal funds rate coverage tracks alongside inflation.

Inflation bars, rate line: policy rates rose sharply as inflation surged in 2022, then began to fall as inflation eased back toward target.

The lag between rate rises and falling inflation tested the nerve of central banks. Raising rates too little risked letting inflation persist, while raising them too far risked choking off growth, a balance our world growth coverage frames.

The tightening cycle was notable for how synchronised it was. Rarely have so many central banks raised rates at once, a coordinated response to a shock that hit almost every economy through the same channels of energy, food and supply.

Rate rises work with a long and variable lag, often taking a year or more to fully affect prices. That delay explains why inflation kept falling through 2023 and 2024 even as some central banks paused or began to reverse their increases.

Emerging central banks often moved earlier and more aggressively than their developed counterparts. Many began raising rates in 2021, ahead of the developed world, drawing on hard won experience of how quickly inflation can spiral if left unchecked.

The policy rate line shown here is an illustrative advanced economy path rather than any single central bank rate. It is meant to convey the broad shape of the tightening cycle, the climb through 2022 and 2023 and the gradual easing that followed.

Higher rates work by cooling demand, raising the cost of borrowing for households and firms and encouraging saving over spending. The aim is to slow price rises without tipping the economy into a deep downturn, a balance that is difficult to strike in practice.

How Much Did Inflation Fall From Peak to Now?

Inflation fell sharply from its peak in both groups. Developed economy inflation dropped from about 7.7 percent to near 2.7 percent by mid 2026, while emerging economy inflation fell from close to 10 percent to about 5.9 percent.

The decline was one of the fastest on record for developed economies, helped by falling energy prices, easing supply chains and tight monetary policy. It brought inflation back within reach of target within about three years of the peak.

Emerging economies saw a large fall too, but from a higher peak and to a higher landing point. Their inflation remained above target, reflecting weaker currencies and less firmly anchored expectations.

The scale of the fall matters as much as the peak. It shows that the post-pandemic inflation, while severe, proved less persistent than many feared, even if prices themselves remain permanently higher than before.

How far it fell: developed inflation fell from about 7.7 percent to near 2.7 percent, while emerging inflation fell from close to 10 percent to about 5.9 percent.

The distance between the two points for each group captures the recovery. Developed economies closed most of the gap to target, while emerging economies made large progress but still had further to travel.

The fall from the peak was helped enormously by energy. As oil and gas prices retreated from their 2022 highs, one of the largest contributors to headline inflation reversed, pulling the annual rate down sharply across both groups of economies.

Yet a falling inflation rate does not mean prices are falling. It means they are rising more slowly, so the higher cost of living reached during the crisis largely remains, which is why households often feel little relief even as the numbers improve.

The dumbbell view is designed to make the size of the decline obvious at a glance. The distance each dot travels from its 2022 peak to its 2026 reading is a direct measure of how much inflation has come down in that group.

World inflation sits between the two groups by construction, since it blends developed and emerging economies together. Its own fall from near 9 percent to around 4 percent captures the global scale of both the crisis and the recovery that followed it.

How Does Inflation Compare Across Selected Economies?

Across individual economies, inflation varied widely. Among developed economies in 2024, the United States sat near 2.6 percent and the United Kingdom near 2.4 percent, while among emerging economies India was near 4.4 percent and Brazil near 3.9 percent.

The spread across countries shows how much the group averages can hide. Even within the developed group, rates ranged from below 2 percent in France to near 3 percent in Germany and the United States.

China stood out among large economies for very low inflation, close to deflation, as weak domestic demand and property market trouble kept prices flat, a very different problem from the one facing most of the world.

European economies had largely brought inflation back to target by 2024, as our inflation in the UK, inflation in France and inflation in Europe coverage sets out, though the pace of the return varied by country.

A wide spread: among the major economies, inflation in 2024 ranged from about 4.4 percent in India down to 1.9 percent in China and France.

The country view underlines that developed and emerging labels are broad. Some emerging economies had lower inflation than some developed ones, while a handful of crisis economies ran far above every country shown here.

The country detail also shows why aggregates can mislead. A single large economy with unusual conditions, such as China with its very low inflation, can pull a group average in a direction that does not reflect the experience of most of its members.

Within Europe, the range was wide even among neighbours. Countries more exposed to imported energy tended to see higher peaks, while those with different energy mixes or price controls experienced the shock in milder or delayed form.

Crisis economies sit in a category of their own. A small number of countries running inflation in the double or triple digits distort any simple average, which is why analysts often report medians or exclude extreme outliers when describing global trends.

The economies shown here are a selection meant to span the range, not a complete list. They include large developed economies and several major emerging ones, chosen to illustrate how widely inflation varied even among the most closely watched countries.

These figures use annual estimates for 2024 rather than the monthly series, which keeps the country comparison clean and consistent. Monthly readings for individual countries can be far more volatile than the smooth group aggregates shown elsewhere in this report.

Where Does Inflation Go Next?

Global inflation is projected to keep easing after 2026, falling toward the mid 3 percent range by 2027, assuming energy and food prices stabilise. Developed economies are expected to hold near target, while emerging economies ease more slowly.

The outlook rests on the assumption that the shocks of the past few years do not return. A fresh jump in energy prices, new supply disruptions or renewed conflict could all slow the decline or push inflation back up.

For developed economies, the central expectation is inflation close to 2 to 3 percent, near the target that anchors policy. For emerging economies, rates are likely to stay somewhat higher, reflecting deeper structural pressures.

The risks are not only to the upside. Weak demand in some large economies could pull inflation lower than expected, while the lasting rise in the price level continues to weigh on households whatever the annual rate.

Easing further: global inflation is projected to keep falling toward the mid 3 percent range by 2027, after peaking near 8.7 percent in 2022.

The forecast is for a gradual return toward more normal inflation, but the experience of the past few years shows how easily that path can be knocked off course by events outside the control of central banks.

Forecasts for inflation carry unusual uncertainty after the past few years. The failure to predict the 2021 surge left policymakers cautious, and most now stress the range of possible outcomes rather than a single confident central estimate.

Structural forces could keep inflation a little higher than the pre pandemic norm. Shifting supply chains, an ageing workforce in many economies and the cost of the energy transition all point to modestly firmer price pressure over the medium term.

Any projection this far out should be read as a central path surrounded by wide bands of uncertainty. Small changes in energy prices, growth or policy can move the outcome by more than a percentage point, as the surprises of recent years have shown.

The gap between developed and emerging economies is expected to persist into the forecast, though in a narrower form. Emerging economies are likely to keep running somewhat hotter, reflecting the structural factors that have long kept their inflation above developed levels.

Developed and Emerging Inflation in Numbers

A few figures capture the story. Developed inflation peaked near 7.7 percent and emerging near 10 percent in 2022, before falling to about 2.7 and 5.9 percent by 2026. The gap between the two reached more than 5 points in 2024.

These numbers matter because inflation shapes wages, savings and the cost of everyday life, hitting households in both rich and developing economies, a picture our richest countries coverage sets alongside incomes.

The divide by year: the gap between emerging and developed inflation was widest in 2024, at more than 5 percentage points.

Together they describe a shared shock with an uneven recovery, where developed economies returned close to target while emerging economies stayed higher for longer, keeping the world average above its pre-pandemic level.

These headline numbers are best read together rather than in isolation. The peaks show the scale of the shock, the latest readings show how far the recovery has come, and the gap shows how unevenly that recovery was shared between the two groups.

For households, the most important figure is not on the chart at all, namely the cumulative rise in prices. Even with inflation back near target, the price level in many economies is far above where it stood before the crisis began.

Each of these figures ties directly back to a chart earlier in this report, so they can be traced rather than taken on trust. The peaks come from the monthly series, the latest readings from its final months and the gap from the difference between the two lines.

Taken as a set, the numbers describe a crisis that was severe but ultimately contained. Inflation reached levels not seen in decades, yet it fell back within a few years rather than becoming permanently entrenched, which was the darker fear at the height of the surge.

Monthly Inflation: The Big Picture

Taken together, the monthly path of inflation from 2021 to 2026 tells a story of a sharp global shock followed by an uneven recovery, with developed economies returning to target faster than emerging ones.

Set over a longer horizon, the surge stands out as an exception to decades of low and stable inflation, one that reshaped policy and expectations across the world, as our US inflation coverage tracks month by month.

The wider record from 2019 to 2027 shows the peak of 2022 and the decline that followed for the world, advanced and emerging economies alike, even as the countries at the very top of the crisis stayed far above this path.

The long view: inflation peaked in 2022 and eased through 2024, with emerging economies staying above advanced ones throughout the cycle.

Whether inflation settles back to its pre-pandemic calm will depend on energy prices, policy and the absence of fresh shocks, but for now the world faces lower inflation than in 2022 and a cost of living that remains permanently higher.

Seen against the calm of the 2010s, the surge of the early 2020s looks like a sharp interruption rather than a new normal. Whether it stays that way depends on whether the forces that drove it prove to be one off shocks or lasting shifts.

The long view also flatters the recovery. Annual figures smooth away the anxious months of 2022 when it was far from clear that inflation would fall back at all, and when many feared a repeat of the entrenched inflation of the 1970s.

What the whole cycle confirms is that developed and emerging economies remain distinct even as they grow more connected. They shared the same shock and the same broad recovery, but the level, the persistence and the cost differed at every stage.

The nine year window from 2019 to 2027 places the surge in its proper context. It sits as a dramatic spike between the low inflation of the late 2010s and the projected return toward more normal rates, a single episode rather than a lasting regime change.

For readers tracking the story going forward, the monthly series is where the next turning point will show up first. Annual averages will confirm the trend only months later, which is why a monthly view remains the most timely guide to where inflation is heading.

The persistence of the developed and emerging divide through this cycle carries a practical lesson for anyone reading global data. A single world inflation figure is convenient, but it can hide experiences that differ by several percentage points and by years of duration between the two groups.

In the end, the monthly record from 2021 to 2026 is a study in shared shocks and separate recoveries. Both groups faced the same surge in prices, both saw it peak in 2022, and both watched it fall, yet developed economies returned to calm far sooner than their emerging counterparts.

Frequently Asked Questions: Developed and Emerging Inflation